V. 2, #196: October 11, 2013

He hiked the old trail, back over the pass
between the hills that led to Finder's place.
The wisps of cloud drew round the moon like lace.
The lake was like a purple sheet of glass.

He tarried by the water, kicking stones,
entranced by cricket and cicadia song.
He might have stayed an hour, or all night long.
The birch trees held bare branches up, like bones.

And all that he remembers of the thing
that rose out of the water there and spoke
to him, is how the bright, pale moonlight shone
like fire upon the simple silver ring
she wore, and how she moaned and went to smoke
before his eyes. He woke cold, and alone.

V. 2, #164: September 9, 2013

He's sealed the windows, bought a sensor light,
and put two brand new deadlocks on the door,
made sure his chimney flue shuts nice and tight.
She won't be coming round here anymore.

There's garlic in the kitchen on a rope,
and cryptic circles drawn on every floor.
Black candles, too. Now he can only hope
she won't be coming round here anymore.

He keeps some holy water by the bed
and on the nightstand, books of ancient lore,
plus warding charms to use against the dead:
don't let her come around here anymore.

Midnight, she comes, more rotten than before.
"Love, please--don't come around here anymore."

V. 2, #86: June 22, 2013

There is a place behind the hospital,
beyond the pauper's graves and wrought-iron fence,
that saw the suicide of Donnagle,
and every night for years has seen it since.

Who knows how he slipped out, got away clean,
eluded nurses, searchlights, and barbed wire,
lugging his can of stolen gasoline,
and, calm as bishops, set himself on fire.

And so it's been for fifty years or more,
behind abandoned rooms and rusted gates:
at midnight, spectral flames begin to roar
and that poor madman screams, and dissipates.

Some say a doctor was involved somehow;
but anyway, it doesn't matter now.

V. 2, #53: May 20, 2013

You boys go on ahead and have your fun.
I won't try to convince you not to go.
Some things won't let you rest until you know,
and in your eyes I see that this is one.

The key is on a ring above the jamb.
Be sure you mind the loose boards on the porch.
There's been no gas for years, so take a torch
or flashlight. It's not like a give a damn,

but if you're fool enough to head upstairs,
the room's third from the right. Set up your glass
and wait till one, not stirring from the spot.
I'm old. There's not much in this world that scares
me now, but I'll say this: I've seen the lass
before. Another time? I'd rather not.

 

V. 2, #35: May 2, 2013

Brunhilda was the girl who lived upstairs--
abusive father, mother disinclined
to intervene. They woke one day to find
her bath run red--she'd bled out all her cares.

The basement was the home of young Clarice,
who had no problems anyone could see--
found dangling from the age-scarred apple tree
out front. Her note read simply, "Grant me peace."

And now, though life had placed the two apart
by three warped floors and more than sixty years,
it seems each lonely soul has found its friend:
dark footsteps down and up the stairs portend
long nights of echoed whispers, laughs, and tears,
and childish games that never meet their end.

 

V. 2, #5: April 1, 2013

We never use the back room anymore,
not since the night Dave spent there, years ago.
Just what he saw I guess we'll never know,
but I'm no longer curious. That door

will stay boarded and shut. The keening wail,
the growling thing that scratches at the jamb
on winter nights--I do not give a damn,
just so it never learns to bend a nail.

I let Dave out that morning, afterward--
his hair streaked white, the blood all down his face,
those empty eyes. That was enough for me.
There's no one in this world who needs to see
what that poor bastard saw, hear what he heard.
Whatever haunts that room can have the place.

 

#416: Dangerous Intersection

The corner store is where they always meet,
long after all the windows have gone dark
and only alley cats prowl Dunham Street:
that fatal intersection near the park
where each of them remembers screeching brakes,
the smell of burning rubber, then the sick
flat slap of steel on flesh. It sometimes makes
the youngest of them weep. Their elders pick
the trash and detritus for souvenirs--
a shard of glass they can pretend got broke
on their own mortal coils. As morning nears,
each spirit sighs and dissipates like smoke.

The brand new traffic light reflects the sun.
It's eighteen months since our last hit and run.
_

#33: May 26, 2006

The noises never stop in this old place.
Of course at midnight chains drag down the halls,
The ghost of Farley moans behind the walls,
And the attic suicide begins to pace;

At four a.m. the murdered maiden screams,
And in the courtyard horses paw the grass;
The bishop, hanged, intones his solemn mass
In his own crypt, for his lost soul, it seems.

All through the night the spirits groan and creak;
The heartbroken bride takes her sunrise leap,
And whispers haunt the dusty bookcase shelves
At dusk. No hour goes by that doesn't speak.
The living, cranky from the lack of sleep,
Wish the dead would keep their damned deaths to themselves.

#3: April 26, 2006

The stranger let his roan mare find the way
until at last they stopped near Finder's Lake.
The wind through paper leaves hissed like a snake;
the sky was purple, and the lake was gray.

Pale clouds like lucent, tattered flags unfurled
to cover pinprick stars. Somewhere a loon
cried. The image of the wandering moon
rolled across the lake-top like a pearl.

And if he saw the ghost of Finder's girl
or knew her, murdered for her lover's sake
these thirty years, he never stopped to say.
Next morning there were footprints from the lake
(not such as from a creature of this world)
and hoofprints leading toward the breaking day.